Investigating officer coached witness on statement, says defendant's lawyer

THE lawyer for John Soh Chee Wen, the alleged mastermind in the ongoing penny stocks trial, on Thursday argued that the prosecution's first witness was coached by the investigating officer (IO).

Senior Counsel N Sreenivasan, in his cross-examination of OCBC Securities remisier Ng Kit Kiat, queried the witness about his statement, in which he fingered 59-year-old Soh and co-defendant Quah Su-Ling as the ones placing unauthorised trades for accounts that belonged to a few other individuals, including Quah's mother.

Quah, 54, is former chief executive of Ipco International (now renamed Renaissance United).

Mr Ng said in the statement that it is likely that calls to his mobile phone from August 2012 to October 2013 contained trade instructions from the duo for the nominees' accounts.

Mr Sreenivasan focused on the word "nominees", and got Mr Ng to confirm that the word was used by the IO and not the witness.

Mr Ng initially said he did not think using the word "nominees" would make any difference to the gist of his statement. Later, he admitted that, being Chinese-educated, he had not fully understood the meaning of the word.

Soh and Quah are accused of puppeteering 189 trading accounts of 60 individuals and corporations to create a false market for Blumont Group, Asiasons Capital (now Attilan Group) and LionGold Corp, collectively known as BAL.

The prosecution alleges that records of calls by Soh and Quah to Mr Ng's mobile phone and trades placed by him shortly after receiving those calls support the remisier's statement that the two Malaysians were giving trading instructions in those calls.

However, Mr Sreenivasan, argued that the connections between the calls and the trades had been described to Mr Ng by the IO, and the remisier was "convinced" by the IO's depiction.

Mr Ng could not recall these trades and phone calls, but as the records "synchronised", he accepted that the trades could have been made as a result of the calls from Soh or Quah. He denied that the IO had coached him on the contents of the statement.

Later, Mr Ng was asked by Mr Sreenivasan to extract a call item in the phone record to show that it resulted in a certain trade.

"Without the help of your friendly IO, please tell us which phone call resulted in this trade?" said Mr Sreenivasan.

Seeing that Mr Ng was taking some time over it, Mr Sreenivasan said: "All the connections you did in your statement were given by you because the IO pointed out to you and told you, 'See, the documents show the connection'... And then you accepted what the IO said... So you were agreeing with the conclusions of the IO, right?"

Mr Ng replied: "Yes."

When Quah's legal counsel Philip Fong cross-examined Mr Ng, the latter said even though he had allowed Quah to give trade orders for others' accounts, he did not "feel safe", as there was no "black and white".

In earlier evidence, Mr Ng testified that Quah had threatened to take her business elsewhere if he pressed for a written authorisation from the account-holders.

Mr Fong said Quah denied forcing Mr Ng.

He also pointed out to Mr Ng that these account holders would have received from the broking house or the Central Depository (CDP) statements of the trades and they could have raised any issues if they had found any discrepancies in the statement.

CDP provides integrated clearing, settlement and depository services for a wide range of products in the Singapore securities market.

Mr Fong asked: "So is there any doubt in your mind at that time that they were not aware of the trades? There was no doubt, right, because they had received all these statements?"

Mr Ng replied: "Yes, yes."

Cross-examination of the witness continues on Friday.

There was some sideline drama on Thursday, when the prosecution took issue with a man seen standing near the dock when Mr Sreenivasan was talking to Soh. Public members must get approval from the court before talking to the accused, who is now in custody, the prosecution pointed out.

Mr Sreenivasan objected to the implication and assured Justice Hoo Sheau Peng that the man was a visiting partner at his law firm and did not talk to Soh.

The judge reminded all present that only the parties and the press are allowed in the well, the space where the judge's bench, counsel tables, media gallery and the dock are.

Tay Peck Gek

29 March 2019